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  • December 2018
  • Article
  • International Journal of Management Research

Improving Resilience Among Employees High in Depression, Anxiety, and Workplace Distress

By: Allison L. Williams, Acacia C. Parks, Grace Cormier, Julia Stafford and A. V. Whillans
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:19
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Abstract

Depression and anxiety are costly for both employees and employers, in terms of direct medical costs as well as costs stemming from lost productive time and missed days at work. Resilience training has been shown to improve workplace functioning for employees, which suggests that it is a promising avenue for reducing some of these costs. However, existing resilience trainings are often conducted in-person, suffer from low levels of engagement, and are difficult to scale to large groups of employees. In the current study, we compared change in resilience over time among employees who were assigned to and used an online resilience intervention platform (Happify), employees who were assigned to and used a scaled-down psychoeducational version of the platform, and employees who did not use their assigned platform (i.e., a no-usage comparison group). We did this separately for users high in emotional distress (clinical levels of depression and/or anxiety) and users high in workplace distress (high levels of presenteeism and/or burnout). Across both samples, employees who used the Happify platform showed significantly greater increases in resilience over eight weeks than employees in the two other groups; the latter two comparison groups did not differ significantly from each other. These findings suggest that a technology-based resilience intervention, which employs a low-touch, cost-effective, easily scalable intervention format, can successfully improve resilience among vulnerable employee groups, which may have important benefits in workplace settings.

Keywords

Depression; Anxiety; Engagement; Resilience; Presenteeism; Employee Engagement; Mental Health; Employees; Emotions; Health; Internet and the Web; Performance Productivity

Citation

Williams, Allison L., Acacia C. Parks, Grace Cormier, Julia Stafford, and A. V. Whillans. "Improving Resilience Among Employees High in Depression, Anxiety, and Workplace Distress." International Journal of Management Research 9, nos. 1-2 (December 2018): 4–22.
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More from the Authors
  • When We're Wrong, It's Our Responsibility as Scientists to Say So By: Ariella S. Kristal, A. V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely
  • Why It's So Hard to Change People's Commuting Behavior By: Ariella S. Kristal and A. V. Whillans
  • Why Asking for Advice Is More Effective Than Asking for Feedback By: Jaewon Yoon, Hayley Blunden, Ariella S. Kristal and A. V. Whillans
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